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Forget the recession, California goes for the green

Posted in alternative energy, BrightSource Energy, climate change, endangered species, enviro startups, environment, global warming, green policy, green startups, green tech, Natural Resources Defense Council, OptiSolar, PG&E, renewable energy, San Diego Gas & Electric, solar energy, solar power plants, Southern California Edison, the green economy, tagged , , , , on November 18, 2008| 2 Comments »

schwarzenegger-optisolarjpeg
photo: California Governor’s Office

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday terminated talk that the recession will crimp California’s fight against global warming when he ordered every utility in the state to obtain a third of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. And in a move that will shake up the land rush to build solar power plants in the desert, Schwarzenegger signed an executive order to streamline and prioritize the licensing of such projects.

“One of the great things about California, of course, is that we always push the envelope,” said Schwarzenegger at startup OptiSolar’s solar cell factory in Sacramento, surrounded by a triptych of solar panels, utility executives and environmentalists. “That is why today I’m proposing that we set our sights even higher. This will be the most aggressive target in the nation.”

California currently requires the state’s Big Three investor-owned utilities – PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) – to secure 20% of their electricity from green energy sources like wind, solar and geothermal by 2010. Monday’s move turns what had been a 33% renewables goal into a mandate and extends responsibility for meeting it to every electricity retailer in California.

Utilities, however, have struggled to reach even the 20% target as renewable energy projects become bogged down in California’s extensive environmental review and licensing process that involves a host of state and federal agencies.

Many proposed massive megawatt solar power plants will be built on environmentally sensitive land in the Mojave and Colorado deserts in California, threatening to trigger years-long battles over endangered species and water.

Take, for instance, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, 400-megawatt solar thermal power plant  to be built by Bay Area startup BrightSource Energy on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property. BrightSource, which has a 20-year contract to sell the power plant’s electricity to PG&E, is dealing with the California Energy Commission, the California Department of Fish and Game, the BLM and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as well as the agencies that control access to the transmission grid.

Then there’s environmental fights over extending power lines to connect such projects to coastal metropolises. Late last month, state regulators rejected San Diego Gas & Electric’s plan to build $1.3 billion transmission line called the Sunrise Powerlink due to the environmental impact of routing it through sensitive desert lands.  A final decision on the project to bring green energy from the Imperial Valley to coastal metropolises will be made next month.

Schwarzenegger’s executive order requires various state agencies to collaborate to create a one-stop shopping permit process to cut in half the time it takes to license a renewable energy project – which now can be a two-year slog. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and BLM also agreed to participate in a Renewable Energy Action Team to expedite the licensing of solar power plants and other green energy projects.

“We will streamline the permitting process and the siting of new plants and transmission lines,” Schwarzenegger said. “We will complete the environmental work up front, dramatically reducing the time and the uncertainty normally associated with any of those projects.”

By March 1, the action team will identify and prioritize those areas of the desert that should be developed first for renewable energy projects based on environmental impacts and access to transmission. The group will also work with another task force that is identifying where power lines should be extended into the desert.

That will affect the fortunes of dozens of solar startups, financiers and speculators — everyone from Goldman Sachs (GS) to Chevron (CVX) — that have filed lease claims on nearly a million areas of desert land that the BLM is opening up for solar power plants. Those with land claims in areas at the top of the list for renewable energy development will find it easier to obtain financing – currently in short supply – to build billion-dollar projects. Those at the bottom of the list may rue the six-figure application fees they paid to stake claims on thousands of acres of desert land.

Behind the optimistic talk and smiles at Monday’s press conference, utility execs and environmentalists who praised the governor’s latest green initiative also signaled that political fights over how to achieve the state’ ambitious renewable energy goals are not over.

“Transmission is absolutely critical to get those renewables from the Imperial Valley,” San Diego Gas & Electric CEO Deborah Reed told the audience. “Assuming a positive decision on Sunrise Powerlink next month, we’ll get to 33% by 2020.”

But when the Nature Conservancy’s Rebecca Shaw took the microphone, she offered a cautionary note. “In our urgency to create a more sustainable future, we must be careful not to destroy the very environment that we are trying to protect,” said Shaw, associate state director for the environmental group.

California’s aggressive renewable energy policies already have had one desired consequence: spurring the creation of green collar jobs. OptiSolar, which earlier this year signed a long-term contract to supply PG&E with 550 megawatts of electricity from a massive photovoltaic solar farm, employs 500 people at its Bay Area headquarters and factory. CEO Randy Goldstein said his company will hire another 1,000 for its new Sacramento factory.

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The renewable energy industry’s Obama wish list

Posted in alternative energy, energy, environment, First Solar, geothermal, Google, green collar jobs, green policy, green tech, investment tax credit, renewable energy, solar energy, Suntech, the green economy, tagged , , , , , , on November 13, 2008| 26 Comments »

The wind, solar and geothermal industries have wasted no time pressing the incoming Obama administration to implement an alternative energy agenda to spur investment and create jobs.

During a conference call Thursday, the leaders of the Solar Energy Industries Association, American Wind Energy Association and other trade groups lobbied for a plethora of legislation and policy initiatives. None of these proposals are new, but given Barack Obama’s campaign promises to promote alternative energy and the strengthened Democratic majority in Congress, the industry has the best chance in many years of seeing this wish list made real.

  • A five-year extension of the production tax credit for the wind industry (it currently has to be renewed every year) to remove uncertainty for investors.
  • A major infrastructure program to upgrade the transmission grid so wind, solar and geothermal energy can be transmitted from the remote areas where it is produced to major cities. Obama advisor Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google (GOOG), recently joined with General Electric (GE) chief Jeff Immelt to launch a joint initiative to develop such smart grid technology as well as push for policy changes in Washington to allow the widespread deployment of renewable energy by rebuilding the nation’s transmission system.
  • Impose a national “renewable portfolio standard” that would mandate that utilities obtain a minimum 10% of their electricity from green sources by 2012 and at least 25% by 2020. Two-thirds of the states currently impose variations of such requirements.
  • Mandate that the federal government – the nation’s single largest consumer of electricity – obtain more energy from renewable sources.
  • Enact a cap-and-trade carbon market.

“If the administration and Congress can quickly implement these policies, renewable energy growth will help turn around the economic decline while at the same time addressing some of our most pressing national security and environmental problems,” the green energy trade groups said in a joint statement.

No doubt those measures are crucial to spurring development of renewable energy and creating green collar jobs. But the major obstacle confronting the alt energy industry right now is the credit crunch that is choking off financing for big wind and solar projects and scaring away investors from more cutting-edge but potentially promising green technologies.

A focus by President Obama and Congress on restoring confidence in the financial system will most likely do the most for green investment as well as restore luster to battered renewable energy stocks like First Solar (FSLR), SunPower (SPWRA) and Suntech (STP).

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6 green tech firms of the future

Posted in alternative energy, environment, green tech, renewable energy, solar energy, tagged , , , , on November 7, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Even in the depths of the downturn, Silicon Valley keeps the tech faith, and these days that faith has a green sheen. So while the news is full of layoffs and cutbacks — even at companies like electric car maker Tesla Motors — the California Clean Tech Open competition Thursday night was handing out $600,000 to a half-dozen startups that hope to be the green tech titans of the future.  For instance, GreenVolts, a 2006 winner, is now building a solar power plant for utility PG&E.

The Clean Tech Open held its first bake-off in the more economically optimistic times of 2006 but bleak days doesn’t appear to have cooled the competition. This year 43 finalists vied for “start-up in a box” packages that include $50,000 in cash and $50,000 worth of business services. The contest is backed by a who’s who of Silicon Valley tech firms (Google (GOOG), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) ), utilities (PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX), San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) ) and government energy labs. Venture capitalists and other business leaders serve as judges.

Here then are six startups that the judges think point the way to the future:

  • Viridis Earth of San Jose, Calif., has developed a product to retrofit air conditioners to reduce their electricity consumption by 20%.
  • Focal Point Energy, also of San Jose, is developing industrial solar hot water and steam generation systems.
  • ElectraDrive of San Francisco retrofits gasoline-powered cars to run on electricity.
  • BottleStone will produce a substitute for stone and concrete building materials that is 80% recycled glass. The Los Altos Hills, Calif., company claims its production process cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 42% .
  • Power Assure of Santa Clara, Calif., is developing energy efficiency management software for power-hogging data centers.
  • Over the Moon Diapers, another San Francisco startup, makes environmentally friendly diapers.

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Generating electricity from a balloon

Posted in alternative energy, Cool Earth Solar, enviro startups, green startups, green tech, PG&E, renewable energy, San Diego Gas & Electric, solar energy, solar power plants, Southern California Edison, Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 5, 2008| 16 Comments »

cool-earth-solar-balloon1

Image: Cool Earth

LIVERMORE, Calif. – It sounds like something out of one of those do-it-your-self magazines: Stitch together two buck’s worth of thin-film plastic – the stuff potato chip bags are made of – stick in a photovoltaic cell, inflate with air and, voilà, you’ve got yourself a “solar balloon” that will generate a kilowatt of electricity. String together 10,000 balloons and you’ve got a solar power plant that can power a town.

California startup Cool Earth Solar believes this high-low tech approach is what will make its solar power plants competitive with fossil fuels. Green Wombat visited Cool Earth’s Livermore headquarters recently for a Fortune Magazine story and got a look at the technology.  “We wanted to do solar in a very different way,” says Cool Earth CEO Rob Lamkin.

Different it is. We’re standing in Cool Earth’s back shop in front of an eight-foot-high solar balloon. Two pounds of plastic are pumped with a third of a pound of air per square inch to make the balloon taut. The curved top two-thirds of the balloon is transparent and the bottom is made of the silvery reflective plastic you’d find lining a bag of junk food. A steel strut inside will hold a tiny but highly efficient solar cell, which is the most high-tech component of the balloon.

Here’s the ingenious part of the technology, developed by scientists at Caltech: Instead of using expensive optics to concentrate sunlight on the solar cell, Cool Earth manipulates the air pressure inside the balloon to change the shape of the mirrored surface so that it focuses the maximum amount of sunlight on the solar cell, boosting electricity generation 300 to 400 times.

By replacing expensive materials like steel with cheap-as-chips plastic and air, Cool Earth aims to dramatically lower the price of solar electricity. “We strongly believe it’s all about cost,” says Lamkin, “not how clever the technology is or if it is 1% more efficient.”  For instance, the amount of aluminum in a can of Coke would provide enough reflective material for 750 balloons, he notes.

The company, founded in 2007, has raised $21 million so far. It plans to build solar power stations in the 10-megawatt to 30-megawatt range. Two to six balloons will be suspended on wood poles and anchored with cables about 10 feet off the ground. That means the earth won’t have to be graded, reducing the environmental impact of Cool Earth’s power plants – a growing issue given that most solar thermal power stations will be built in the desert, home to a plethora of protected wildlife. The relatively compact size of Cool Earth’s power stations also means they can be located close to existing transmission lines.

A prototype power plant is being built in a field across the street from Cool Earth’s offices and Lamkin says a 1.5 megawatt plant will be constructed early next year in the Central Valley town of Tracy. The electricity probably will be sold to utility PG&E (PCG) under a state renewable energy program.

Unlike big solar thermal plants, photovoltaic power stations do not need to obtain a license from the California Energy Commission, which can be an expensive two-year ordeal. Lamkin estimates that a Cool Earth power plant can be up and running in six months, which should appeal to utilities like PG&E, Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE), which are under the gun to meet state mandates to obtain 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010.

Now Cool Earth just needs to make the technology work in the field. It has yet to produce electricity from its balloons, as the solar cells are still being produced. Also unknown is how the balloons will operate in real-world conditions. Lamkin says they can withstand 125-mile-an-hour winds. They have a lifespan of just five years, but Cool Earth expects to replace the balloons every year, given their low cost.

“Our major structural element is air, which so far is free,” Lamkin says. “And the sun isn’t taxed either.”

Yet.

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Boo! First Solar’s peek at 2009

Posted in energy, environment, First Solar, green tech, renewable energy, solar energy, solar power plants, Southern California Edison, tagged , , , on October 31, 2008| 3 Comments »

The economy may be all trick and no treat, but you wouldn’t know it from First Solar, one of the few public solar cell makers and thus a bellwether for the industry. This week the Tempe, Ariz.-based company reported solid third-quarter earnings and unveiled two deals that mark a big expansion in the U.S. market.

It agreed to supply solar installer SolarCity with 100 megawatts of thin-film modules and made a $25 million investment in the Silicon Valley startup – which represents a 10% stake, valuing SolarCity at $250 million. The other deal didn’t get much attention – it was buried in the earnings report – but is significant nonetheless. First Solar (FSLR) will team up with utility giant Edison International (EIX)‘s power plant subsidiary, Edison Mission Energy, to develop large-scale solar power stations. (First Solar just completed a 2.4 megawatt project for Southern California Edison as part of the utility’s 250-megawatt commercial rooftop initiative and will finish by year’s end a 12-megawatt solar power plant in Nevada for Sempra (SRE).)

“By combining Mission’s extensive track record of power project development with First Solar’s low-cost systems and construction capability, we believe we’ve created a powerful engine for future growth in the U.S. utilities segment,” First Solar CEO Mike Ahearn said during the company’s earnings call Wednesday, according to a transcript published by the Seeking Alpha business blog.

But it was Ahearn’s comments on the European market – 85% of First Solar’s business is in Germany, for instance – that is of most interest to investors.

While he predicts the European market will remain strong – First Solar expects its 2009 net sales to range from $2 billion to $2.1 billion, up from $1.22 to $1.24 for 2008 – he did note some red flags, particularly for utility-scale solar power stations.

“Our review indicates that solar projects lending outside of Germany has essentially stopped for the time being,” Ahearn said. “Today, we have identified potential financial risk in our customer base that represent approximately 15% to 20% of our planned sales in Europe in 2009.”

“We believe most of our European customers outside of Germany have sufficient balance sheet strength to bridge any near-term projects delays,” he added.

During the Solar Power International conference in San Diego this month, there was much buzz that solar companies that had ramped up their production capacity over the past couple of years would be hit by an oversupply of solar modules just as customers get crunched by the credit crisis.

But Ahearn told analysts on Wednesday that First Solar’s thin-film modules – which are made by depositing solar cells on plates of glass and use minimal amounts of expensive silicon – would continue to sell for less than conventional cells and thus remain attractive to customers. “We therefore assume that any price competition is unlikely to have a sustained impact on First Solar,”  he said.

Despite First Solar’s moves into the U.S. market, Ahearn acknowledged the immediate future is uncertain. While Congress extended a key investment tax credit for eight years as part of the financial bailout package, investors have lost their appetite for tax equity partnerships that would buy those credits from solar companies in exchange for financing the construction of power plants.

“In the short-term, our review indicates that the traditional investors in tax equity – financial institutions – have largely stopped participating,” Ahearn said. “We assume some of these investors will return to the market in 2009, but the timing and future cost of this funding is difficult to predict. The possibility of more expensive tax equity and its impact on solar electricity prices for both new and pending projects remains a major uncertainty going into 2009.”

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Solar power: Not just for electricity

Posted in alternative energy, Ausra, energy, environment, eSolar, green tech, solar energy, solar power plants, tagged , , , , , , on October 23, 2008| 3 Comments »

photos: Ausra

Silicon Valley startup Ausra fired up a five-megawatt solar power plant outside Bakersfield Thursday, the first big solar station to go online in California in nearly two decades.

Ausra has a 20-year contract with utility PG&E (PCG) for a 177-megawatt solar power plant to be built some 70 miles away on the Carrizo Plains in San Luis Obispo County. But like competitors who also aim to sell solar technology untried on a large scale, Ausra constructed the demo plant, called Kimberlina, as a proof of concept for investors who will have to be persuaded in these tight times to pony up half a billion dollars or more in project financing. “It’s important because this is the technology banks’ engineers want to see so they’re comfortable recommending financing for the Carrizo Plains site,” Ausra CEO Robert Fishman told Green Wombat.

At Kimberlina’s unveiling Thursday, PG&E CEO Peter Darbee warned against letting the financial crisis derail the fight against global warming.  “The capital markets are going to distinguish between high-risk projects and low-risk projects and the high-risk projects are not going to get financed in the future,” he said. “PG&E stands ready to take on the challenge of financing renewables.”

While Ausra built Kimberlina to show that its compact linear fresnel reflector technology can generate utility-scale electricity, the plant is also designed to demonstrate that solar tech can be deployed for other industrial uses. At heart, a solar thermal power plant is a steam machine. In Ausra’s case, long rows of flat mirrors that sit low to the ground. concentrate sunlight on water-filled pipes that hang over the mirrors to create steam. That drives an electricity-generating turbine, but Ausra and other companies are looking to sell the steam as well.

For instance, take a drive around Bakersfield and you’d think you were in Texas, what with all the oil rigs rocking back and forth across a treeless landscape. Bakersfield oil is thick and heavy, so steam is injected into the ground to make it flow. Fishman wants oil companies to stop burning expensive natural gas to boil water and start using the sun.

“We’ve been doing a lot of show and tell,” says Fishman, referring to the Kimberlina plant, which sits just off the Bakersfield oil patch’s main highway. “If you look at putting a solar generator in, the economics look pretty good.”

Each 1,000-foot row, or line, of Ausra mirrors generates six megawatts of heat, according to Fishman, who says the company has talked to potential clients who would need anywhere between five and 50 lines.

Ausra also is exploring other markets for its steam technology, such as food processing.

Rival power plant builder eSolar, the Pasadena startup incubated by Bill Gross’ Idealab and funded in part by Google (GOOG), also sees other markets for its green tech. Last month, eSolar, which has a contact to supply utility Southern California Edison (EIX) with 245 megawatts of electricity, licensed its technology to stealth renewable fuels startup Sundrop, based in Pojoaque, N.M., north of Santa Fe.

Sundrop CEO John Stevens will say little about the Kleiner Perkins-backed company’s plans. “Sundrop uses low-cost concentrated solar energy to drive renewable energy into fuels,” he wrote in an e-mail. “We will produce low-cost renewable fuels.  We expect to be demonstrating scale production in 2009-2010.”

eSolar CEO Asif Ansari told Green Wombat his company will provide fields of mirrors called heliostats to Sundrop along with software and control systems to concentrate the sun’s rays on a tower. (Venture Beat uncovered documents that indicates Sundrop may plan to produce hydrogen and other fuels.)

“Basically, we’re a technology company; we don’t want to be in the construction business,” says Ansari. “What we really are trying to develop here is a standard global platform for delivering concentrated solar energy to any target that can be used for a variety of applications.”

Besides using solar energy to produce such fuels as hydrogen, Ansari, like Ausra, sees the oil industry as a potential market. He says the food processing and fertilizer industries also could substitute eSolar’s technology for natural gas to make steam.

Back in Bakersfield, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger presided over the official opening of Ausra’s Kimberlina solar plant on Thursday. (Live streaming his appearance.) “California is going green and it’s going green really fast,” the governator said before an audience that included PG&E chief executive Peter Darbee and Silicon Valley venture capitalists Ray Lane and Vinod Khosla.

The solar power station is plugged into the grid and will supply PG&E with enough electricity to power about 3,500 homes in central California. The mirror arrays were made at Ausra’s robotic factory in Las Vegas.

“This represents the best of American and Australian ingenuity and get-it-done attitude,” said Fishman at the ceremony, referring to Ausra’s roots in Sydney. “People don’t need to think of Ausra as an alternative energy company. As of today it is simply an energy company.”

Schwarzenegger gave the signal and Kimberlina officially came online, the 1,000-foot-long mirror arrays rotating toward the sun.

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Germany invests in green jobs – in America

Posted in energy, environment, First Solar, green tech, solar energy, solar power plants, Solyndra, SunPower, tagged , , , , , on October 17, 2008| Leave a Comment »

photos: SolarWorld

HILLSBORO, Ore. – A solar cell factory has sprouted in Oregon’s Silicon Forest amid the region’s old-growth semiconductor plants. And who is providing these well-paid, high-tech green jobs, investing in America rather than fleeing to Asia to set up shop? The Germans.

Bonn-based SolarWorld AG on Friday officially flips the switch on the United States’ largest solar cell plant. (See the Fortune video here.) The company, the world’s fifth largest solar cell manufacturer, has recycled a former Komatsu factory built to produce silicon wafers for the chip industry  Last week, SolarWorld America president Boris Klebensberger gave Green Wombat a sneak peak at the new Hillsboro plant and talked about why a German company, whose domestic solar market is the planet’s largest, is pursuing a made-in-America strategy. (SolarWorld’s German rival Solon AG, meanwhile, on Friday opened a smaller solar module plant in Tucson, Ariz.)

“I know a lot of people will say, ‘You idiot, Boris. You can’t manufacture in the U.S.,’ ” says Klebensberger, 39, who sports a hoop earring and has a penchant for saying what’s on his mind.

That has been the conventional wisdom. While thin-film solar companies like First Solar (FSLR), Solyndra and Energy Conversion Devices (ENER) have built factories in the U.S., traditional silicon-based module makers such as SunPower (SPWRA) have outsourced production overseas.

But SolarWorld is counting on its expertise in manufacturing in high-cost Germany and its new American branding to give it a competitive advantage. “Made in America is a very big selling point,” says SolarWorld marketing director Anne Schneider. “Customers like that.”

Like other solar cell makers, SolarWorld is trying to build a brand around an increasingly commoditized product. “Even in a commodity business this is a brand,” says Klebensberger. “If you have to choose between two products that are technologically the same,  you’ll probably choose the one made in the U.S.”

SolarWorld jumped into the U.S. market in 2006 when it acquired Royal Dutch Shell’s solar cell factory in Camarillo, Calif., and a silicon ingot plant in Vancouver, Wash. “This was an opportunity for SolarWorld to establish itself in the U.S. market very quickly and get an employee base,” says Klebensberger, who also serves as COO of SolarWorld’s global operations.

The company was founded in 1998 by, as Klebensberger puts it, “five crazy guys who people thought were on drugs” when they said they were going into the solar business. (Klebensberger was employee No. 7.) But Germany’s lucrative incentives for renewable energy quickly turned the nation into a solar powerhouse and SolarWorld went public in 1999. Revenues – $931 million last year – have been growing around 30%-40% annually and the company has a market cap of $3.1 billion.

SolarWorld saw a potentially huge opportunity in the U.S. but the Shell plant was relatively small – producing 80 megawatts of solar cells annually – so Klebensberger went shopping for a new factory. He ruled out California – too expensive – before settling on Hillsboro, 20 miles west of Portland.

The cost of living was reasonable – at least compared to California – and Oregon is on the forefront of promoting sustainability and the green economy. And just as importantly, Intel (INTC) and other chip companies had opened semiconductor factories, or fabs, in the area in the 1980s and ’90s. “A lot of our workforce came from established chip companies or those that closed their fabs,” says Klebensberger, sipping tea from a coffee cup emblazoned with “Got Silicon?”

“The manufacturing and product is different but the raw starting material is the same and there’s a lot of similarity in the equipment,” adds Gordon Bisner, vice president of operations and a chip industry veteran. “There’s a lot of the same skill sets from a maintenance and engineering standpoint and understanding the basic manufacturing principles and what it takes to manufacture a product successfully in the United States.”

Klebensberger’s team found an old Komatsu silicon wafer fab that had stood empty for years. They bought the 480,000-square foot building for $40 million last year and began retrofitting it. “We needed a quick ramp-up,” says Klebensberger. “This business is all about speed.”

The retrofit took about 15 months – though the minimalist gray industrial decor of the Komatsu era remains. When fully built out in a couple of years, the plant will produce 500 megawatts’ worth of solar cells annually and employ 1,400 workers. In the meantime, the target is 100 megawatts by the end of 2008, and 250 megawatts in 2009.

In one corner of the building, a room of steel vats cook up polysilicon, producing eight-foot-long silicon ingots in the shape of giant silver pencils. Those ingots are taken to another room where wiresaw machines slice them into wafers. The wafers then travel down a conveyor belt where robots wash them and scan for imperfections.

“What’s critical here is the equipment,” says Bisner over the hum of the machines. “Our competitive advantage is how we use the equipment, how can we get every little bit of photovoltaic cell out of the end of the line. It takes equipment, it takes technology and it takes people too.”

In an adjoining room, the wafers are imprinted with contacts and transformed into photovoltaic cells. Depending on customer demand, SolarWorld will sell both silicon wafers and finished cells. The company currently gets 10% to 15% of its revenues from the U.S.

SolarWorld isn’t the only solar company wanting a made-in-America label. Sanyo this week announced it will build a solar cell factory in Salem, south of Portland. And Chinese solar giant Suntech (STP) earlier this month acquired a California-based solar installer and announced a joint venture with San Francisco-based MMA Renewable Ventures (MMA) to build solar power plants. Suntech chief strategy officer Steven Chan told Green Wombat this week that Suntech will likely open factories in the U.S. within a couple years.

Says Klebensberger, “We provide green jobs. We’re not just talking about it, we’re doing it.”

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A green credit crunch?

Posted in climate change, electric cars, enviro startups, environment, eSolar, geothermal, global warming, Google, green financing, green startups, green tech, renewable energy, solar energy, solar power plants, Southern California Edison, Uncategorized, wind power, tagged , , , , , on September 25, 2008| 2 Comments »

photo: eSolar

If Wall Street’s implosion can feel remote on the West Coast, where green tech startups largely rely on Silicon Valley venture capital, there may be no escaping the fallout from the credit crunch.

Still, even those renewable energy companies tapping East Coast cash have powered ahead amid the chaos on the Street. Take SolarReserve, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based solar power plant developer. A day after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy last week, the stealth startup announced a $140 million round of funding from investors that included Citigroup (C) and Credit Suisse (CS).

Lehman does hold small stakes in wind turbine maker Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria, Calif., and Ormat Technologies, a Reno, Nev., geothermal developer. “Lehman’s exit from wind is not good news, but it’s not the end of the world,” says Ethan Zindler, head of North American research for New Energy Finance, a London-based research firm. And while Lehman holds stock lent to it from solar cell companies like SunPower (SPWR) and Evergreen Solar – potentially diluting their earnings per share if the stock is not returned – Lehman is not a big player in solar.

That’s not the case with Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS). Both are major solar and wind investors and both were forced this week to reorganize themselves into bank holding companies to stave off shotgun marriages with other institutions. Spokespeople for Goldman and Morgan Stanley told Green Wombat that the firms’ transformation into more conventional commercial banks – at least a two-year process- will not change their green investing strategies.

But if there appears to be little immediate collateral damage from the financial crisis for green tech startups, there are longer-term consequences. Solar power plants, wind farms and other large-scale renewable energy projects require billions of dollars in bank financing.

“Credit is just going to get more expensive,” says Zindler. “We’ve already seen some pull-back for some big solar and wind deals. Bigger developers who have solid balance sheets will be OK but the smaller guys could be in trouble.”

Says Bill Gross, chairman of solar power plant developer eSolar: “I think if you’re going to get project financing, you’re just going to have to show higher returns to get people to take the money out of the mattress.”

But Gross, the founder of Pasadena, Calif.-based startup incubator Idealab, argues that given soaring electricity demand and fossil fuel prices, large-scale renewable energy projects will be an attractive investment, paricularly since utilities typically sign 20-year contracts for the power they produce. eSolar, which is backed by Google and other investors, has a long-term contract to supply Southern California Edison with 245 megawatts of green electricity. Gross says eSolar has a pipeline of other projects and interest in the company remains high, particularly overseas.

“If you can make projects that can compete with fossil fuels on a parity basis, those projects are going to be financed,” he says, “because they’re safe returns for 20 years and I think money is going to flow to them.”

Rob Lamkin, CEO of solar power plant startup Cool Earth, echoed that sentiment. “The credit crisis does give me pause,” says Lamkin, whose Livermore, Calif.-company has raised $21 million in venture funding and is developing “solar balloons” that use air pressure to concentrate sunlight on solar cells. “But the energy problem is so big that I don’t see problems raising project financing.”

The key for developers of utility-scale projects – particularly solar power plants – will be keeping their costs under control; not an easy thing when deploying new technologies amid a commodities boom.

Dita Bronicki, CEO of geothermal power plant developer Ormat Technologies (ORA), does not anticipate trouble obtaining project financing. “I think the cost of money is going to go up, but a company like Ormat with an operating fleet and operating cash flow will not be as affected,” Bronicki says. “Small companies will find that lenders will be more picky in what they will invest.”

Green entrepreneurs tend to be an optimistic bunch, so it’s not surprising they still think the future looks bright. But they had reason to be sunny this week – amid Wall Street’s meltdown, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed, at long last,  extensions of crucial renewable energy investment tax credits and other goodies to goose green tech, such as a tax credit worth up to $7,500 for buyers of plug-in electric cars. The Senate action now must be reconciled with similar legislation in the House of Representatives.

Solar projects, for instance, would qualify for a 30% investment tax credit through 2016.

“That is one thing that will help project finance,” says Gross. “So many people are sitting on the sidelines right now and if the investment tax credit passes that will help get these projects financed.”

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Solar industry fights utility’s big solar project

Posted in alternative energy, climate change, energy, environment, First Solar, global warming, green tech, PG&E, renewable energy, San Diego Gas & Electric, solar energy, solar power plants, Southern California Edison, SunPower, tagged , , , , , , , on August 12, 2008| 21 Comments »

photo: Southern California Edison

When Southern California Edison unveiled plans to install 250 megawatts’ worth of solar panels on warehouse roofs back in March, it was hailed as a ground-breaking move. In one fell swoop, the giant utility would cut the cost of photovoltaic power, expand the solar market and kick-start efforts to transform untold acres of sun-baked commercial roof space into mini-power plants.

There’s just one problem: the solar industry is fighting the billion-dollar plan. In briefs filed with the California Public Utilities Commission, solar companies, industry trade groups and consumer advocates argue that allowing a utility to own and operate such massive green megawattage will crowd out competitors who can’t hope to compete with a project financed by Edison’s ratepayers.  (In California, shareholders of investor-owned utilities are guaranteed a rate of return for approved projects, while utility customers bear a portion of the costs in the form of higher rates.)

The five-year plan “would establish SCE as the monopoly developer of commercial-scale distributed solar in its service territory,” wrote Arno Harris, CEO of Recurrent Energy, a San Francisco company that sells solar electricity to commercial customers. “This would irreparably impair the development of a competitive solar industry.”

Southern California Edison (EIX) is the first utility in the United States to propose such a “distributed generation” scheme and the dispute is being watched closely as a test case for the viability of producing renewable electicity from hundreds of millions of square feet of commercial rooftops. Such systems can be plugged directly into existing transmission lines and tend to generate the most solar power when electricity demand spikes – typically on summer afternoons when people crank their air conditioners. Having such green energy on tap would save utilities from having to build expensive and planet-warming fossil fuel-powered “peaker plants” that sit idle except when demand suddenly rises.

Even critics hail Edison’s move as “bold” and “visionary” and no one disputes that in California the development of big rooftop solar has lagged. For instance, the state’s $3.3 billion “million solar roofs” initiative is designed to put smaller-scale solar panels on homes and businesses and provides generous rebates for systems under 1 megawatt. At the other end of the scale, the state’s big utilities have been signing contracts to buy electricity from solar thermal power plants to be built in the desert. Left out of the subsidy game are incentives for the 1-to-2 megawatt arrays well-suited for commercial buildings.

Southern California Edison says it’s filling that gap and will energize the solar industry, not crush it. The utility plans to lease 65 million square feet of commercial rooftop space in the “Inland Empire” region of Southern California for solar arrays that would generate enough electricity to power 162,000 homes.

“SCE’s financial stability and business reputation will increase the probability that 250 MW of solar PV systems will be available to meet the state’s solar rooftop goals over the next five years,” the utility’s attorneys wrote in a brief filed with the utilities commission, which must approve the program. “In so doing, a solar PV program can improve efficiencies … to reduce costs and jump start the competitiveness of solar PV for widespread application on California roofs.”

There’s no doubt the program will be a boon for solar module makers. For instance, thin-film solar cell company First Solar (FSLR) is supplying 33,000 panels for the program’s first project, a 600,000-square-foot roof array in the inland city of Fontana. However, Southern California Edison intends to contract for union labor to install the solar systems and tap its own capital and a rate hike to finance the project. That won’t leave many opportunities for solar installers and financiers like SunPower (SPWR), SunEdison and MMA Renewable Ventures (MMA).

“Even though this program is kind of taking bread out of our own mouth, the demand for solar will keep going up,” says Mark McLanahan, senior vice president of corporate development at MMA Renewable Ventures, a San Francisco firm that finances commercial solar arrays.

“What they have announced is extremely visionary,” McLanahan tells Green Wombat. “It’s game changing and opens up whole new realms of what solar can do. That’s exciting.”  On the other hand, he says, “It’s certainly possible that a young, growing industry that is pretty fragmented could be hurt by this rather than helped.”

A solution advanced by some solar industry critics is for Southern California Edison to open up the entire program to competitive bidding, not just the procurement of solar panels. The utility vehemently opposes the idea, arguing it would work against the economies of scale it says it can bring to the program.

Whether regulators will approve Southern California Edison’s request for a rate hike to pay for the initiative – and at electricity rates that are significantly higher than those set for other solar programs – remains to be seen. The commission’s own ratepayer advocate has questioned whether utility customers will get their money’s worth.

The utilities commission is unlikely to issue a final decision until next year. In the meantime, you can bet the state’s other big utilities – PG&E (PCG) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) – and solar companies will be watching to see whether the sky’s the limit for big rooftop solar or whether a ceiling is about to be placed on the industry’s ambitions.

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T. Boone Pickens’ big wind play

Posted in climate change, energy, environment, global warming, green tech, wind power, tagged , , , , , , on May 15, 2008| 1 Comment »

For some on the right coast, the current renewable energy craze seems like a rerun of that ’70s show, the province of California dreamers and pie-in-the-sky Silicon Valley techies. But increasingly it’s all about Big Business, a point driven home Thursday by a deal struck by two decidedly non-crunchy granola types: billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens and General Electric chief Jeffrey Immelt.

Pickens’ Mesa Power placed an order for 667 GE (GE) wind turbines for the first phase of a massive 4,000-megawatt, 400,000-acre West Texas wind farm called the Pampa Wind Project. When completed in 2014, Pampa is expected to produce enough clean green energy to light up 1.3 million homes, according to Mesa. Each of those 667 turbines alone can generate 1.5 megawatts of electricity. The first phase of the project will cost $2 billion, with a good chunk of the cash going to GE.

That a legendary wildcatter like Pickens sees big money to be made from renewable energy in an oil state like Texas is just another sign that green is not a fad but the future. “You find an oilfield, it peaks and starts declining, and you’ve got to find another one to replace it,” Pickens said in a statement. “It can drive you crazy. With wind, there’s no decline curve.” (Just how much money Pickens will make off wind will depend on whether Congress extends a production tax credit that makes such projects viable.)

When it comes to energy, Texas is literally its own country, as the Lone Star State is not plugged into the national power grid and must generate nearly all its electricity within its borders. Aggressive efforts by Texas regulators and entrepreneurs to make the state energy independent by upgrading its transmission system and tapping wind power are models for the rest of the country.

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